Gordimer’s pursuit of equality reminds us that we all have a part to play in our beloved country

As I reflect on Heritage Day, which has become quite ambiguous and amorphous as we struggle with our collective heritage as South Africans, my thoughts turn to the complementary relationship that creative writing has had in South Africa as we reconcile our country’s past, present and future. The South African and African writers I have encountered and been the most captivated by do not write of the fantastical world of fairy tales, but of a fiction that often sets up parallel realities that still mirror the reality we live in, and asks probing questions about our society.  

About two weeks ago, I had to miss the annual Nadine Gordimer lecture hosted by the University of the Witwatersrand, even though I had thought I would be able to go. Gordimer, a writer born in South Africa in 1923 of British and Lithuanian parents, was part of the anti-apartheid movement and had her works banned as a result. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.

The lecture has become quite the calendar event over the years and has been graced by various prolific thinkers, academics and activists in democratic South Africa. This year the keynote speaker was the illustrious activist, poet and author Dr Mandla Langa, whose address was titled “The Vocabulary of Witnesses”. One of South Africa’s most talented and thoughtful authors, Masande Ntshanga, was his respondent. To me, the event represented the perfect representation of looking to the past (Gordimer), the present (Langa) and the future (Ntshanga).